Currently there’s an IMHO Thread about fighting a wolf with a baseball bat …so, I guess that’s why Cujo all of a sudden popped into my head.
I was in middle school when I went through my Stephen King phase, so it’s been almost 30 years since I’ve read Cujo. I don’t have many very specific memories of it anymore. I do still remember some weird minor side plot about a children’s cereal that was making kids sick. The cereal had a strong red dye and when the kids got sick their vomit and/or diarrhea was bright red and therefore mistaken for blood by their parents. I also remember that the cereal was the very first “sugar cereal” for this particular brand, that the brand had employed the same T.V. spokesman for many years and that this T.V. spokesman had always taken pride in the fact that these cereals were healthy, that he in his role as spokesman was encouraging healthy eating habits for children. The spokesman was hesitant when the brand wanted to launch their first sugar cereal, then when the kids started getting sick the spokesman was burdened by overwhelming guilt about compromising his principles and encouraging kids to eat this junk food cereal.
So, uh …what was going on here?
Does it tie in directly to the main plot?
Is it just backstory for one of the main characters?
Is it meant to mirror some element from the main plot to provide insight/texture?
Weird as it is, it’s this side plot that has most vividly stayed with me over the years.
It’s part of the explanation for how the mom and kid could be stuck in that car for so long without anyone realizing they were missing. The dad in the story was the advertising exec on the cereal account. The PR disaster requires him to fly back to the office for a week, where he’s working damage control pretty much 24/7. Shortly before this happened, he’d found out his wife was cheating on him, and they’d had a big fight. So he’s not at home to realize his family is missing, and he’s too busy/pissed to make too much of an effort to stay in touch by phone, and doesn’t figure out something’s wrong until it’s too late to do anything.
I just recently re-read “Cujo” - it wasn’t bad, but it was hard to read without thinking how it would have been about 20 pages long in today’s world of cellphones and ubiquitous coverage.
Eh, there’s still a lot of the world you can’t get a signal. About half the drive between home and my husbands’ parents’ house, for example. I have AT&T and there’s no signal for most of it - they have Verizon and it’s better out there. I could totally get Cujo’ed out in the country somewhere between Lugoff and Kershaw.
